Team “gives up” on player, player gets opportunity with nice, clever people on new team that he was unfairly denied by dim-witted meanies on old team.

With Joe Colborne, however, it wouldn’t be true. The Leafs didn’t “give up” on him at all.

Could they have kept him and traded Nazem Kadri or Jay McClement? Sure. Or dumped Colton Orr or Frazer McLaren, abandoning their philosophy on muscle? Sure. Or declined to trade for veteran centre David Bolland? Sure.

Did they choose none of the above? Yes.

Toronto did anything but rush the kid. He was on the Kadri slow-and-steady-wins-the-race program. He was with the Leafs in the playoffs last spring against the Bruins, and got into a pair of games.

It sure seemed that this fall, at training camp, he would get his chance to crack the lineup for good.

Except Colborne didn’t have a strong camp. Very quiet, actually. And, the bigger problem was, Colborne was out of options, to use baseball-speak.

He couldn’t go back to the Marlies without going on waivers — that would have been the easy answer, and with Tyler Bozak injured, Colborne would probably have been back in the NHL by now.

It wasn’t that Dave Nonis et al abandoned hope with the 23-year-old centre; they just couldn’t make a case to keep him ahead of someone else, and the clock had run out.

That’s how the system is supposed to work. The days of the Montreal Canadiens burying NHL-quality players in Sherbrooke because the system allowed them to are long over.

Teams are going to lose players they might otherwise want to keep. That’s how the Leafs ended up getting Jonathan Bernier.

The system, really, freed Colborne for a new opportunity, just as once it freed up 24-year-old Mikhail Grabovski for the Leafs because Toronto was weak and had lots of roster room.

As a Flame, Colborne has been showing glimpses of the same potential the Bruins and Leafs both saw but couldn’t quite mine. When the Leafs face the Flames on Wednesday night in Calgary, No. 8 will be skating on a line with Mike Cammalleri and T.J. Gagliardi, and we’ll see whether the Flames have indeed unlocked the key to Colborne’s potential.

“The opportunity I’m getting here in Calgary wouldn’t have been possible in Toronto,” Colborne said in an interview Tuesday. “This seems like a really good fit for me.

“Toronto was in a spot where they had a chance to try and win, so they wanted some veteran presence. It’s an organizational thing. For one reason or another, it didn’t work out. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy my time there. I loved every second of it.”

The Leafs may not have the strongest group of centres, but in Calgary, the closest thing the Flames have to a No. 1 pivot is another ex-Leaf, Matt Stajan.

Sean Monahan is surely the man of the future. But he’s 18 years old. Roman Cervenka moved on. Max Reinhart isn’t ready yet.

So Colborne will get to try to prove he’s more deserving than other centres in the organization like Mikael Backlund or Roman Horak as the Flames, surprising so far, try to execute a rebuild.

“I feel like I gave it everything I had (in Toronto),” said Colborne. “So many people have come to me and said the opportunity I’m going to get (in Calgary) is special because they don’t have the depth at centre that Toronto does.

“It’s kind of being in the right place at the right time, and when you do get an opportunity, you have to take advantage.”

He’ll be taking advantage of home cooking as often as possible, with his parents thrilled to have their boy back home, although Colborne has chosen to live in a hotel for now.

He’s a likeable kid, friendly to a fault. He doesn’t do the usual hockey player faux politeness thing, calling everyone Mr. This and Mr. That. Instead, it’s Burkie (Brian Burke) and Randy (Carlyle) and Bobby (Hartley). He wants this career, but understands there’s life outside the game.

He’s a little reminiscent of another Leaf prospect once upon a time, Drake Berehowsky, who came from a comfortable Etobicoke family and had to learn the hard way he wasn’t good enough to be a star. He had to learn to scrap and claw and fight to find big-league work and keep it.

That didn’t happen until Berehowsky was in his sixth professional season, buried with an IHL outfit in San Antonio. Colborne’s not there yet, and his size and natural talent may yet save him from that hardscrabble road.

The Flames are his third NHL organization. Nobody’s given up on him yet.

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